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THE ORIGINAL TERRITORY 



UNITED STATES 



A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 
SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 21, 1 899 



HON. DAVID J. HILL, LL. D., 

ASSISTANT SI-XRETARV OF STATE 



Reprinted from the Nationai, Geographic Magazine, Voi<. X, 
No. 3, March, 1S99 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

JUDD & DETWEILER, PRINTERS 

1899 






GS525 



THE 



National Geographic Magazine 



Vol. X MARCH, 1899 No. 3 



THE ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

By Hon. David J. Hill, LL. D., 

Assistant Secretary of State 

In retracing the development of our country we are led back 
to its infancy — to the cradle around w hich were already grouped 
the forces which have determined the destiny of the nation. 
We cannot too often be recalled to the rude simplicity of that 
earlier time or too often reminded of the elemental sources of 
our national life — so near to nature, so little afiected l)y the art 
or thought of man. 

A great continent, an unknown wilderness, rich with every 
gift of nature, lies waiting for the men who are to awake it from 
its sleep of ages, to come across the sea. Strange ships enter its 
bays and harbors and penetrate its broad and navigable rivers, 
but it still sleeps on ; for the strangers come only to gather gold 
among its sands, not to make it theirs by pledges of honest toil. 
But at last are united the two essentials of a nation — a land and 
a people ; for while the land lies waste and men are in ceaseless 
migration, a nation cannot exist. When land and people are 
wedded by permanent settlement, when man by toil evokes from 
nature her power to satisfy his domestic needs, and nature re- 
sponds by kindling within him the flame of local affections, the 
wheels of society are set in motion, the economic and political 
forces begin their operation, and the process of national evolu- 
tion has commenced. 

I. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONTINENT 

The discovery of this continent was destined to deflect all the 
currents of human history and to offer a home to new nations ; 

(1) 



74 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

yet for more than a centiuy after the voyages of Columhus there 
were but two settlements within the present limits of the United 
States, and both of Spanish origin. The Atlantic slope, whose 
streams flow eastward from the Alleghany mountains, abounds 
in safe harbors and land-locked bays, in whose restful waters 
the ships of the early French and English navigators found 
shelter after their long and perilous voyages ; but the dense 
forest frowned be3'ond the coast-line, the shore seemed unattract- 
ive, and the ships sailed southward to the fabled land of gold 
and precious stones. It was with surprise that the early mar- 
iners skirted these somber shores barring the wa}^ to India, for 
they believed that north of Florida, supj)Osed to be an island, 
the open sea led on to the Indian ocean. ^ A waterway across the 
continent was diligently sought in the belief that America, if 
not an island, was but a jirojection of Asia, and John Smith 
expected by ascending the James, the Potomac, or the Hudson, 
to emerge upon the South sea. Among his commissions was one 
to seek a new route to Cliina by ascending the Chickahominy. 

With the opening of the seventeenth century were planted 
the first English colonies in America. Humble merchants and 
pilgrims, wanderers going forth in frail ships to find uncertain 
lands, holding as their titles vague charters from King James, 
landed at Jamestown and on Plymouth Rock.' With a world 
to divide, monarchs were generous in those daj^s, and did their 
rude surveying on the council table, using parallels of latitude 
and unknow^i seas for boundaries. It mattered little that the 
London and Plymouth companies were granted lands overlap- 
ping by three degrees of latitude, for as neither was allowed to 
settle within a hundred miles of the other, there was no danger 
of bad neighbors. When, to rectify all errors, the London Com- 
pany received new boundaries,'' they were described as extending 
two hundred miles from Old Point Comfort along the Atlantic 
coast in each direction, north and south, and "up into the land 
from sea to sea, west and northwest"— a line which was after- 
ward held to give to Virginia the greater part of North America. 

There was no contest for possession of the continent in those 
early days. Hudson leisurely sailed up the river which now 
bears his name and claimed it for the Dutch. Gustavus Adol- 
phus, the "Snow King" of the North, witliout opposition, sent 

1 See Da Vinci's map of 1512-151(i. This and tlie other maps lefened to in the notes 
may be found in McCoun's Historical Geography of the United States. 

2 See map of King .James" Patent of KiOO. 

3 See map of Heorgauization of tlie Plynn)utli romi>any in KliO. 

(2) 



ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 75 

his hardy Swedes to the Dehxware peninsula. The French went 
fishing off the foggy coasts of Newfoundland, claimed the gulf 
and river of St Lawrence for their King, and built their rude 
huts amid the snows of Acadia. The English settlements were 
small and feeble communities, trembling between the sea and 
the wilderness. There is something sublime in the spectacle of 
this great unexplored continent, guarding the rich treasures of 
its vast interior b}^ grim sentinels of gloomy forest, confronting 
with a frown that narrow, halting strip of civilization, whose 
frail forces, in spite of early poverty and weakness, were destined 
to become its imperious master. For a hundred years it seemed 
a most unequal contest. A handful of log-houses clustered about 
the fortified church, a few acres of cultivated land not far away, 
little groups of coarsely clad human figures laboring in the fields 
with rifies near at hand, the infrequent arrival of a storm-beaten 
ship — -these were the only signs of the coming transformation 
which for generations met the sharp glance of the stealthy savage 
as he crept to the edge of the forest to observe the course of the 
white man's life. 

The map of the Atlantic slope in 1640* reveals the cramped 
and perilous condition of the English colonies. Considered as 
a group, they were wholly inclosed between French territory on 
the one side and the sea on the other. Beginning with Acadia 
on the north, the French pressed upon the western limits of New 
England until their frontiers met those of the Dutch ; then 
sweeping around the home of the powerful Iroquois Indians, 
who occupied the greater part of what is now the State of New 
York, New France, following the line of the Alleghanies, hemmed 
in all tlie seaboard settlements, cutting them off from the ^^^est, 
and stretching along the whole western boundary of Virginia 
until it ended in French Florida, covering the present states of 
South Carolina and Georgia, beyond which lay Spanish Florida 
and the Gulf of Mexico. While France thus stood as a barrier 
to the further })enetration of the continent by the English, leav- 
ing them o-nh'a slender stri{) of coast, the Dutch and the Swedes 
effectually separated the northern and southern colonies from 
each other. To crown all, the Indians, affiliated with the French, 
who fraternized and mingled freely with them, were a constant 
menace to the safety of the English settlements, and furnished 
a savage band of mercenaries for advancing the ambitious 
schemes of France. 

••See map of National Claims to the Atlantic Slope in lil4u. 
(3) 



76 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Considering the map alone, it would seem as if the French 
power was so intrenched upon this continent as to possess the 
keys of its destiny. But there are many factors which enter 
into the prohlem of nation-building, and the first of these is the 
temper and quality of men. The French colonies were a nursery, 
presided over by paternalism. The English threw their offspring 
out into the wilderness to fight their way for themselves, with 
no other heritage than libert}'. In Canada the French colonist 
could not build his own house or sow his own seed or rea}) his 
own grain or raise his own cattle without the supervision of public 
officers receiving minute instructions from the home government. 
No farmer could visit the towns without permission or leave the 
colony without royal authorization. Public meetings were pro- 
hibited, initiative of every kind was forbidden, and the expres- 
sion of opinion was repressed. Petted, i)ampered, and protected 
by royixX authority, the French colonies were stricken with paraly- 
sis, and instead of looking to themselves became whoU}^ helpless 
and dependent. \Vlien, at last, the death-struggle came in the 
battle for empire, the result was inevitable. Self-government, 
self-reliance, and freedom were foredoomed to win. 

The map of 1763,^ before the Peace of Paris, is the record of a 
hundred and twenty years of struggle and development,in which, 
with heroism, persistence, and patience the English-speaking col- 
onists fought for and conquered space. The Dutch, tenacious 
of their speech and manners, having tliemselves absorbed the 
Swedes, were in turn engulfed in the English expansion, but not 
without leaving a deep and lasting impress upon the communi- 
ties that overbore them. Brave little Holland, the first exchange 
in Europe for the commerce of the world, a cradle of art and 
science, a power upon the ocean, and an asylum and school of 
liberty when England sent her great thinkers across tlie North 
sea to sit at the feet of her worth}' masters, has always lived, and 
still lives, in the Empire State and the nation. Her influence, 
even upon New England, is confessed by John Adams, when he 
says, ■' of all the countries of Europe, Holland seems to me the 
most like home." 

New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware com- 
pleted the unbroken chain of English colonies from the lawless 
fishing villages of Maine to the broad {)lantations of Georgia. 
Between the sea and the mountains had grown up a solid pha- 
lanx of self-governing colonies as jealous of the French and as 

*See map of Enijlisli Colonies, \~i\?,. 
(4) 



ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 77 

hostile to their pretensions as the mother country. The colonies 
of England, which in 1640 were threatened with being pushed 
into tlie sea, had become a continuous chain of eager contestants 
for sui)remacy, destined to sweep westward and drive the French 
dominion from the continent forever. 

The French had formed a bold and magnificent design for the 
possession of the vast interior west of the mountains." Near the 
close of the seventeenth century a brave and brilliant explorer, 
La Salle, continuing the career of Champlain, who had carried 
the trade and dominion of France westward to Wisconsin, de- 
scended the valley of the iMississij)i)i. after traversing the Great 
Lakes, and planted a French settlement in Louisiana. The St 
Lawnnice, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, these furnished the 
natural highway for the genius of the great Frenchman in his 
progress toward the fulfillment of his splendid dream of empire; 
but the chief necessit}^ for its realization was men, and these 
were wanting. At the close of the seventeenth century the 
French in all the wide region claimed by them numbered only 
twelve thousand souls, while the English had grown to a hun- 
dred thousand in New England and New York alone. " The 
paternal providence of Versailles," says Parkman, " mindful of 
their needs, sent to the colonists of Louisiana, in 1704, a gift of 
twenty marriageable girls, described as ' nurtured in virtue and 
piety and accustomed to work.' " But it required more than a 
cargo of girls to save New France. The forces of true coloniza- 
tion were Avanting to the French, whose adventurers were de- 
scribed by an otticer as " beggars sent out to enrich themselves," 
and who expected the government to feed them while they 
hunted for pearls and gold mines. 

A weak chain of forts and trading posts, occupied chiefly by 
priests and friendly Indians, was the only bond that held to- 
gether the long interval of wilderness between the St Lawrence 
and the Gulf of Mexico. The governor of New France, La 
Jonquiere, perceived that the connecting link between these out- 
posts was the rich valley of the Ohio, and demanded of his King 
the shi[)ment of ten thousand French peasants to populate this 
intermediate region. But the thought had occurred too late ; 
Louis was indifferent, jireoccupied with the ))leasures of his 
court ; the inevitable conflict came at last and New France was 
erased from the map of North America. 

France resisted nobly in Europe, but left the defense of her 

"See map of the territory of the present United States (hiring the Freneli mid Indian 
wars. 

(5) 



78 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

American empire to a handful of forces under the gallant Mont- 
calm, while England sent 9,000 men in ships to Quebec, and the 
sturdy Americans, amidst great sacrifices, pushed their way 
through the forest to the St Lawrence to join in the attack. 
Upon the plains of Abraham, whose heights were scaled by 
sui)erhuman daring, was fought the battle that decided the fate 
of Canada, and the dying Wolfe wrung from the hand of the 
dying Montcalm the keys of the great West and the dominion 
of a continent. 

The destiny of America was involved in the issue of that 
death struggle between the paternalism of France and the forces 
of self-government. " The town meeting pitted against bureau- 
crac}'," says Fiske, " was like a titan overthrowing a cripi)le. 
. . . This ruin of the French scheme of colonial empire was 
due to no accidental circumstance, but was involved in the very 
nature of the French political system. Obviously it is impos- 
sible for a people to plant beyond sea a colony which shall be 
self-supporting unless it has retained intact the power of self- 
government at home. It is to the self-government of England, 
and to no less cause, that we are to look for the secret of that 
boundless vitality which has given to men of English speech the 
vittermost parts of the earth for an inheritance." 

But it was not political causes alone that eflfected the anni- 
hilation of French influence on this continent. The French, 
the Dutch, and the Spaniards all surpassed the English in the 
adventurous s})irit that leads to wide exploration and brilliant 
discovery ; but the English had come with their wives and chil- 
dren, and the}^ had come to stay. The}' loved agriculture and 
industry and knew the meaning of that potential word " home." 
They were in tlie best sense a sedentary people, forming attach- 
ments to the soil, and by honest labor with their own hands 
making it respond to their necessities. With plenty of food and 
boundless acres awaiting the culture of the toiler, the conditions 
of a great population were fulfilled. They religiousl}' obeved the 
scriptural injunction to '" multiply, and replenish the earth," 
and brought up their numerous children to lead frugal and 
well-regulated lives, earning their bread in the sweat of their 
faces. A little later Franklin estimated that the population of 
the colonies doubled every twenty-five years Avithout counting 
the immigrants. But it was not so with the French or the Span- 
ish, who left behind them in the wilderness their half-breed off- 
spring to be nurtured by Indian mothers and encounter the 



ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 79 

hazards of a rude existence, while they themselves moved on in 
the path of adventure. It was the compactness of the English 
colonies, their industry, their frugality, and their prolific rate of 
increase, under the influence of home, which decided the fate of 
North America and made the triumph of Wolfe " the greatest 
turning point as yet discernible in modern history." 

France emerged from the Seven Years' War defeated, humbled, 
and overwhelmed, her armies beaten, her navies shattered, her 
possessions overrun throughout the world. The purpose of the 
war was colonial supremacy, and it left the map of Europe prac- 
tically unaltered, but the map of America was totally changed 
by the Treaty of Paris.' France was driven from the continent, 
and there remained to her, of all her vast possessions in America, 
only a few scattered islands. Spain relinquished Florida and 
retired behind the Mississippi. The whole area east of that great 
waterway, and the entire territory north of the fiftieth parallel, 
were united under the dominion of the British Crown. By the 
Peace of Paris the American continent was thus divided be- 
tween England and Spain, the work of territorial consolidation 
under a single power between the Atlantic and the Mississippi 
was completed, the conditions for the development of one great 
nation in this vast area were supplied, and there was required 
to effect its formation only those measures of political reorganiza- 
tion which the genius of the people could not fail to accomplish. 

But the chief result of the war was the birth of an American 
people, a distinct nationality, brought to a consciousness of itself 
by common interests and common sufferings. It was already a 
composite fabric, whose warp was of English origin, but whose 
woof was borrowed from every European country. The indus- 
trious German, the thrifty Swede, the sturdy Hollander, the 
virtuous Huguenot, the frugal Scotchman, and the generous but 
turbulent Irishman were already here, and all had acquired the 
qualities of a new and indejjendentrace. It has been said that 
" God sifted three kingdoms to send forth choice grain into the 
wilderness," but the statement is inadequate. The true mother- 
land of America is not England, it is the whole of Europe. 

II. THE TERRITOKIAL CLAIMS AND CESSIONS OF THE STATES 

It is an interesting fact that the year 1768, the date of the 
Treaty of Paris, marks also the beginning of that movement 

^ See map of the territory of the present United States after February 10, 170:!. Re- 
sult of the Frencli anil Indian wars. 

(7) 



80 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

toward independence which cuhiiinated in the Declaration of 
1776. The King and the Parliament, unniindlul of the great 
services of the colonies in the destruction of the i)ower of France, 
chose to regard them as mere sources of revenue for extinguish- 
ing the enormous debt which Great Britain had incurred in ex- 
tending her colonial empire. The British theory was that the 
colonies should i)a3' the cost of the war. The latter, on the other 
hand, had made great sacrifices for the public good. The war 
had involved them in a large expenditure of life and mone.y. 
Thirty thousand men had been killed in battle, and many of 
the colonies had incurred considerable debts. The imposition 
of special taxes upon them they considered not only unjust in 
principle but unwarranted by their conduct toward the British 
Crown, for whose glory they had bravely fought. When, in 1774, 
the estrangement of the colonies toward England had reached 
a crisis, they were thirteen separate communities, with different 
laws and political organizations, possessing little in common ex- 
cept the general use of the English language, allegiance to the 
same King, and the memories of fellowship in the French and 
Indian wars. Twenty years earlier Franklin had proposed a 
union for the common defense, and his telling figure of the snake 
severed into thirteen parts, representing the colonies, over the 
legend, " Join or die," in the days of the Albany convention, 
made an indelible impression on the popular mind. The Union, 
however, had never been consummated, for it was rejected by the 
colonial assemblies, who feared they might create a new master, 
and not acceptable to the English Board of Trade, because the idea 
was too democratic. But Franklin, who w\as then in England as 
the agent of several colonies, had written an official letter to the 
Massachusetts Assembly, in which he said : " The strength of an 
empire depends not only on the union of its parts, but on their 
readiness for the united exertion of their common force ; " and, 
to secure this end, he proposed that a general congress be as- 
sembled to make a solemn assertion of the rights of the colonies 
and to engage them with each other never to grant aid to the 
Crown in any general war till those rights were recognized by 
the King and both houses of Parliament. 

Accordingly a Congress, styling itself '' Vie delegates appointed 
by the good people of these colonies,''^ assembled at Philadelphia on 
the 5th of September, 1774. There was no law or precedent for 
such a union, and it was not even pretended that the colonial 
assemblies had the legal riglit to unite without tlie consent of 

(8) 



ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 81 

Parliament, and as if in some measure to break the force of this 
illegality, the delegates had assembled in the name of " the peo- 
ple." It was, in effect, the declaration of a new sovereignty. 
Patrick Henry justified it on the ground that the " colonial gov- 
ernments were at an end ; " that " all America was thrown into 
one mass and was in a state of nature." " Where are your land- 
marks, your boundaries of colonies ? " said he. . . . The 
distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, 
and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian ; I am 
an American." His theory was premature, however, for Con- 
gress had not been appointed as direct representatives of the 
people, but as committees of organized colonies which had not 
yet thrown off allegiance to the British Crown ; but his words 
were prophetic and forecast the philosophy which the Declara- 
tion of Independence was soon to assert as the expressed con- 
viction of the nation. The tendency of public thought, however, 
outstripped the progress of events ; and, believing the delegates 
to represent the whole territory claimed by the British Crown 
in America, the people spontaneously named the assembly the 
''Continental Congress." To the popular mind the revolution 
had become the revolt of a continent against the oppression of 
an island. When Colonel Ethan Allen demanded the surrender 
of Fort Ticonderoga "in the name of the Great Jehovah and 
the Continental Congress," he uttered the whole philoso])hy of 
the American Revolution. 

It soon became apparent that the colonists, to whom their 
King and Parliament denied the rights of Englishmen, were in 
fact reduced to '' a state of nature," and the idea of Patrick Henry 
gained ascendancy. The logical result was the abandonment of 
all allegiance to the British Crown by the Declaration of Inde- 
})endence. 

Ten days before the adoption of the Declaration, Congress had 
resolved that " all persons abiding within any of the united col- 
onies, and deriving protection from the laws of the same, owed 
allegiance to the said laws and were members of said colony." 
Thus the same power which declared independence gave to the 
colonial governments all the authority which the}^ possessed. 
The colonies owed their existence as independent common- 
wealths, not to their own separate acts and achievements, but 
to the united action of all combined. Whatever sovereignty 
they subsequently claimed was wholly derived from the union 
between them. Alone each colony was but an empty name; 

(9) 



82 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

together they were a sovereign power. It was as a continental 
force that the people won their independence, and the Nation is 
in reality older tlian tlie States. 

All this was felt even at the moment, and on the day the 
coinmittee for drafting the Declaration of Independence was 
appointed anotlier committee was directed to prepare the form 
of a confederation. The power which declared independence 
and thereby created new sovereignties knew itself to be a mere 
illusion, except as its acts were ratified by the force of the united 
nation. 

But when the Dechiration had in effect brought into being 
thirteen sovereigns in })lace of one, new problems burst into view. 
Each of these new states claimed all the rights granted b}-- its 
own fundamental laws, and in addition its share of the power 
hitherto accorded to the Crown. What, then, was to be the dis- 
position of those "Crown lands '' which were not within the 
actual bounds of any colony, although originally included in 
their charters — that vast territory lying between the Alleghany 
mountains and the Mississippi, Avhich had been won in battle 
from the rule of France?* 

Six states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, 
North Carolina, and Georgia — by reason of their original char- 
ters or subsequent treaties, claimed the ownership of all the 
lands west of their actual boundaries as far as the Mississippi 
river. It is true that a royal proclamation had been issued in 
1763 prohibiting colonial governors from granting patents of 
land beyond the sources of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic, 
and that in 1774 the " Crown lands," as they were called, north- 
west of the Ohio were annexed to the royal province of Quebec ; 
but these were considered by the colonies unjust encroachments, 
for had they not freely sacrificed lives and money to conquer 
this same country from New France? The othercolonies,hoAvever, 
hemmed in by inelastic boundaries, protested against these 
large pretensions, maintaining that possessions which had been 
acquired by the force and sacrifice of all should not be appro- 
priated for the aggrandizement of a part. New Hamjishire, 
Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Mary- 
land, denied a share of this great territory, saw in the claims of 
the "' land states " not only an evident injustice in refusing them 
a part in the fruits of a common victory, but a menace to the 
equilibrium of tlie states b}^ the arrested development of some 

»See map of Land Claims of the Thirteen Original States. 

(10) 



ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 8;^, 

and the unlimited expansion of others. It was indeed no imagi- 
nary danger, for by offering free lands to settlers the larger states 
could easily depopulate the smaller. Silas Deane, who had been 
sent as commissioner to France, had suggested that the North- 
west Territory was '' a resource amply adequate, under proper 
regulations, for defraying the whole exi)ense of the war."' When, 
therefore, in September, 1776, a resolution of Congress offered a 
bounty of land to soldiers enlisting for the war, Maryland, seeing 
that Congress had no land to give and she herself none to contrib- 
ute, perceived that the states without land would be compelled to 
bu}^ it of those whose stock was unbounded and at their own 
price, thus impoverishing themselves and enriching their rivals. 

Virginia in her constitution maintained her charter claims, 
whicli if allowed would have made her a mighty empire, greater 
when developed than all the other states combined. On the 
30th of October, 1776, Maryland passed n resolution asserting 
that Virginia's title had "no foundation in justice, and that if 
the same or any like claim is admitted, the freedom of the 
smaller states and the liberties of America may be thereby 
greatly endangered."' and expressed the conviction that, the 
dominion over those lands having been established by the blood 
and treasure of the United States, " such lands ought to be con- 
sidered a common stock, to be parceled out at }>ro])er times into 
convenient, free, and independent governments.'' 

Thus by the foresight of Maryland, to which all honor will be 
forever due, was first posed the momentous question upon 
whose decision hung the whole harmonious system of govern- 
ment which we now enjoy. A year later, and a month before 
the Articles of Confederation were proposed for ratification, it 
was moved in Congress "that the United States in Congress 
assembled shall have the sole and exclusive right and power to 
ascertain and fix the western boundary of such states as claim 
to the Mississippi or South Sea (meaning the Pacific), and shall 
lay out the land l^eyond the boundary so ascertained into sepa- 
rate and independent states from time to time as the numbers 
and circumstances of the peojile may require." Only Mary- 
land, battling for this great and fruitful idea and a})pealing to 
the wisdom of the people as against the ambition and avarice 
of the states, voted in the affirmative; but a principle had been 
laid down whose wisdom was eventually to be perceived by all — 
a principle which has proved the keystone of tlie Union, sup- 
porting the splendid arch upon which our local liberties and 
national power now rest. 

(11) 



84 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

In 1780 New York authorized the limitation of her western 
boundaries and the cession of her vacant lands to the United 
States. " She ceased to use the language of royal grants and 
discarded the principle of succession. She came forth from 
among her parchments into the forum of conscience in presence 
of the whole American people, and recognizing the justice of 
their claim to territories gained by their common efforts, to 
secure the inestimable blessing of union, for their good and for 
her own, she submitted to the national will the determination 
of her western boundaries, and devoted to the national benefit 
her vast claims to unoccupied territories." 

Nor can we deny to all the states a share in the honor of a 
wise and noble compromise. For the consummation of the 
Union the smaller states intrusted their liberties to the keeping 
of the greater, and the greater, in a spirit of generosity, finally 
bequeathed their large inheritance to the common good, and 
shared the luster of a brilliant destiny with new stars yet to rise 
in the firmament of liberty. Special praise should be accorded 
to Virginia, for " in her great cession of the territory northwest 
of the Ohio, the greatest cession of territory in the histor^^ of the 
world ever voluntarily made by a powerful state able to defend 
it, she invited the other states to follow her example, and thus 
made j^ossible the local governments and magical development 
of the West, while she averted the jealousy, and possibly the 
anarchy and ])loodshed, that might liave followed the assertion 
of her claims." 

Ml. THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN 

AMien the long struggle for independence was concluded, it 
was not to be doubted that the young Republic would hold out 
with stubborn insistence for the recognition of its sovereignty 
over the territory east of the Mississippi. After the battles of 
the war, which ended with Yorktown, came the battles of diplo- 
macy, which were to be fought with an equal skill and daring. 
All the glory and pride of colonial supremacy which had ani- 
mated Great Britain when the Treaty of Paris was made with 
the French were now to be disputed by the colonies themselves. 

Instructed to claim the whole of the territory south of the 
St Lawrence and east of the Mississippi, Franklin proposed, in 
addition, that England should voluntarily cede Canada, in order 
that its lands might be sold to raise a fund for the compensation 
of Americans whose property had been destro3'ed ; to which Lord 

(12) 



ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 85 

Grenville wittil}^ rejoined that he could not perceive what motive 
England had for giving away a fourteenth i)rovince because she 
had already lost thirteen. 

Although the commissioners had been directed to observe the 
most perfect loyalty to France, and to rely implicitly upon her 
counsels, we now know that the most moderate territorial pre- 
tensions of the United States had not one friend in Europe. 
Spain was represented at the French court by the Count d'Aranda, 
a subtle diplomatist who bore no love to the young Republic of 
the West. Fearing alike future encroachment upon the territory 
of Sjniin and the dangerous contagion of republican i)rinciples, 
with which her American colonies had already become infected, 
he made preposterous claims for his country and |)retended that 
the West was the territory of free and independent nations of 
Indians, whose sovereignty over their soil should be considered 
inviolable. Sustained by such flimsy reasons, he proposed to 
shut the United States between the mountains and the sea, in- 
terposing a vast Indian territory between them and the Missis- 
sippi and permitting Canada to extend south to the Ohio river.® 

Bound to Spain by an ancient family alliance and a secret 
treaty which made the cession of Gibraltar back to Spain the 
price of peace with England, France proved the mere advocate 
of her ally and client. The Count de Vergennes, the able but 
evasive Minister of Foreign Affairs, had secretly instructed the 
envoys of France to the United States to oppose by every wile 
known to the art of diplomacy the American acquisition of 
Canada, while yet .pretending to favor American expansion. 
Ra3aieval reports, in great glee, as we now read in his dispatches, 
how successfully he hoodwinked the President and certain mem- 
bers of Congress, beguiled by his craft and the sweet influence 
of their tobacco pipes, and won rapturous expressions of grati- 
tude from the Sj)anish agent Mirales. " It is a part of the system 
of Spain, as it is also of France," writes Vergennes, "to main- 
tain the English in the possession of Nova Scotia and Canada." 
During the negotiations he says the same to Luzerne, and adds 
that, of course, "tliis fasliion of thinking should be an impene- 
trable secret for the Americans." 

We are not surprised, therefore, that the French court sus- 
tained the idea of Aranda,'" and desired to crush the United 

9 See map of boundary lines discussed at Paris, 1782. 

loSeemap of Boundaries of the United States, Canada, and the Spanish Possessions, 
according to tiie Proposal of the Court of France, 1782. 

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86 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

States by massing to tlie westward the Spanish, the Indians, and 
the English, leaving the territory of the colonies only a narrow 
fringe pendant to the broad snowy mantle of the Dominion of 
Canada, torn from its own shoulders in 1763, and perhaps with 
the dim hope of its ultimate recovery amidst the strange inter- 
national vicissitudes that attend defeat and victory. Regarding 
the fisheries as " a great nursery for seamen," and seeing in them 
a school for ultiniate supremacy on the ocean, France joined 
England in seeking to deprive the colonies of their hereditary 
rights on the banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St Law- 
rence. The keen vision of Vergennes foreknew the future strug- 
gle for the Mississii)pi valley and the i)Ossession of the Far \\'est, 
and, faithful to Spain, he ridiculed " the extravagance of the 
American views and pretentions," and called the demands of 
John Jay "a delirium not to be seriously refuted." 

Happily for their country, the American commissioners saw a 
way to peace without sacrificing the interests of their peoi)le, 
and although threatened with a vote of censure in Congress for 
their independent action and disregard of French counsel, they 
were brave and wise enough to nuiintain every just demand. 
The Treaty of Versailles not only acknowledged the independence 
of the United States, secured the rights of the fisheries, and 
opened the free navigation of the Mississippi, but it confirmed 
substantially the American claims in the matter of l^oundaries 
and won a vast territorial empire for the United States." It was 
one of the greatest victories in the history of diplomacy and laid 
the foundation of the nation's greatness. The Great Lakes and 
tlie Mississippi became American highways, and the path to the 
Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific was opened to American enter- 
prise. The peace was received " with a burst of approbation " 
in the United States, and the refrain was taken up — 

" No pent-up Utica confines our powers, 
The whole unbounded continent is ours." 

The completeness of the victory was resented by Spain, com- 
pelled to take Florida in place of Gibraltar, and regretted by 
France, which got nothing at all. The baffled Aranda wrote to 
his King: "This Federal Republic is born a pigmy. A day 
Avill come when it will be a giant — even a colossus — formidable 
to these countries. Liberty of conscience, the facility of estab- 
lishing a new population on immense lands, as well as the ad- 

11 See map of the Oi'iginal Public Domain, 1787. 
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ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 87 

vantage of the new government, will draw thither farmers and 
artisans from all nations." Montmorin, the successor of Ver- 
gennes, wrote to his envoy : " It is not advisable for France to 
give to America all the stability of which she is capable; she 
will acquire a degree of power which she will be too well dis- 
posed to abuse." But that was written before the French revo- 
lution and from the shadow of a tottering throne. From our 
great sister republic of today we would receive a different greet- 
ing, and among its words of amity would be expressions of 
gratitude for the principles and example of the United States, 
which have done so much toward the estal)lishment of the 
French Republic. 

IV. THE INFLUENCE OF THE NATIONAL DOMAIN 

A cool and temperate Englishman, '' a Air-sighted man in 
manj^ things," wrote of the prospects of the Confederation soon 
after the peace: "As to the grandeur of America and its being 
a rising empire under one head, whether re})ublican or monarch- 
ical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary notions that ever 
was conceived, even by writers of romance. The Americans can 
never be united into one compact empire under any species of 
government whatever ; a disunited peo})le till the end of time, 
suspicious and distrustful of each other, they will be divided 
and subdivided into little commonwealths or princii)alities, ac- 
cording to natural boundaries, by great bays of the sea and by 
vast rivers, lakes, and ridges of mountains." 

The events of the time seemed to justify this dismal pro])hecy, 
and the fear of its fulfillment agitated the best minds among the 
American patriots. The vast Northwest Territoi-y having Iteen 
ceded to the United States by Great Britain, the question Avas, 
How was it to be held ? Congress instructed General Washington 
to garrison the frontier })osts, when surrendered, with the conti- 
nental troops ; but after long and elaborate debates the danger 
of confiding so much }»ower to the federal government was made 
the excuse for disbanding the troops and leaving the frontiers to 
the jirotection of a few state militia. To the aml)itious and jeal- 
ous leaders in the states, anxious to rise to i)Ower in their nar- 
row sovereignties, the utility of the Union seemed already i)assed, 
and the destiny of America appeared to be wrai)i)ed up in the 
fate of thirteen rival republics, each too feeble to protect itself 
against foreign aggression and all too suspicious to trust one an- 
other. The impotent bond of the Confederation became the 

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88 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

laughing-stock of Europe. To many it seemed that a return to 
the protection of England was the only way of salvation, for the 
paper money liad l^econie Avortliless, the fires of local insurrec- 
tion hurst forth from the ashes of discontent, interstate com- 
merce was destroyed by petty frontier exactions, and the great 
experiment of independence seemed doomed to end in anarchy. 

We cannot here review the disquiet and anxiety of that 
troubled time, and can only briefly indicate the unexpected 
cure. The possession of a national domain, composed of terri- 
tory ceded by the states to the Confederation, proved to be the 
anchor of the Union. Over this area Congress had assumed a 
certain degree of power, and it was the only sphere in which the 
sovereignty of the Confederation could assert itself. In the vast 
unpopulated stretches of the great Northwest, Congress, by the 
ordinance of 1784 and the later ordinance of 1787, exercised the 
right of eminent domain, ruled by its laws, and sold the land to 
obtain an income. The future states were bound to make their 
laws in harmony with the great principles of freedom, education, 
and suffrage laid down by Congress, and under no circumstances 
could they ever be separated from the Union. " I doubt," says 
Daniel Webster, " whether one single law of any law-giver, an- 
cient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, 
and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787." 

Thus grew up silently, almost unobserved, yet, as Madison 
remarked, " without the least color of constitutional authority," 
a national sovereignty which justified recognition at last by the 
formation of the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation 
had contemplated no such exercise of power, and the ordinance 
was never submitted for ratification by the States ; but the ne- 
cessity of governing that vast territory had forced upon Congress 
a course as wise as it was illegal, until, as by a sudden turn in 
a mountain path a splendid landscape bursts into view, the great 
and impressive fact that a nation had been created commanded 
attention; and, seeing its sublime significance, confessing its 
rightful claims, the whole people felt their kinship and unity, 
and could express their conviction in the potent phrase, '' We, 
the people of the United States." 

The treaty of 1783 stipulated that the navigation of the Mis- 
sissippi from its source to the ocean should be forever free and 
open to the citizens of the United States. Spain, however, who 
was not a party to this agreement, asserted an exclusive control 
overthe river and denied the right of free navigation. This situa- 

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ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 89 

tion gave rise to one of the most thrilling controversies in the 
historv of our countr}', now almost forgotten, but fraught with 
momentous consequences to tlie future of the American people. 
Franklin had foreseen the issue when he said to Jay, " Poor as 
we are, yet, as I know we shall be rich, I would rather buy at 
a great price their right on the Mississippi than sell a drop of 
its waters. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street 
door." 

Soon after his retirement from the army, Washington made 
a tour into the western country, which he had known so well in 
his early days and whose wealth and value he justly appreciated. 
His purpose was to ascertain by what means it could be most 
effectually bound to the Union. The population of that rich 
and fertile region, a bold and adventurous class, separated by 
the remoteness of their position from connection with the east- 
ern states, with little respect for the feeble rule of Congress, in 
which they had no representation, already showed signs of es- 
trangement alid independence. So rich a soil, such luxuriant 
vegetation, had never belonged hitherto to any brancli of the 
English-speaking race. Plains capable without cultivation of 
sapi)orting millions of cattle, fields golden with heavy harvests 
in response to the minimum expenditure of toil, rivers affording 
great natural highways for the movement of their agricultural 
productions needed only an adequate market to render the great 
Northwest the richest portion of the globe. The Atlantic states 
knew little of this vast region or its untold resources. They 
looked upon it chiefly as a means for })aying the federal debts 
})}' the sale of public lands, and did not realize its political sig- 
nificance until their indifference and the inefficiency of the gov- 
ernment had almost lost it to the Union. 

Washington, whose large practical intelligence was so quick 
to discern great issues, saw the impending danger. Returning 
from his western journey, he recommended the appointment of 
a commission to make a survey ascertaining the means of nat- 
ural water communication between Lake Erie and the tidewaters 
of Virginia. His project was to o[)en all the possible avenues 
between the western territory and the Atlantic, thinking thus to 
identify the interests of the two sections, to offer to the West 
participation in the advantages of the sea and to enrich the East 
by making it the emporium of the western productions. But 
tlie shrewd frontiersmen who had taken up the western lands saw 
another avenue to the sea and another way to market. It was 

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90 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Mississippi and the trihutaries flowing into it which seemed 
Nature's great highway ready for their use. Only one barrier op- 
posed them, the obstinate refusal of 8i)ain, who held the mouth of 
the great river and its western bank, to permit its free navigation. 
An interposition so autocratic, so unjust, and so injurious roused 
the resentment of the strong men of the West and they resolved 
not to submit to this limitation of their rights. The East, 
fearing that the West would be lost if not held to its east- 
ern connections, opposed the opening of the Mississij^pi, pre- 
ferring a commercial treaty with Spain to free navigation. Con- 
gress met the problem with the feebleness that characterized its 
action after the Revolution. Diplomacy was bartering away the 
rights of the young West, when suddenly a trader, whose ship- 
ment had been seized by the Spanish authorities, returned to 
tell the story of his wrong just at the moment when news ar- 
rived that Congress intended to surrender the present use of the 
Mississippi. The whole poi)ulation of the western settlements 
rose in wrath and indignation to protest against the folly by which 
they were being sacrificed. Looking out over their magnificent 
domain, whose soil they were redeeming from the idleness of its 
natural state, they felt that their abundance was turned to pov- 
erty if the mighty rivers which swept i)ast their fields waving 
with harvests abundant to sustain the populations of Euro])e, 
were closed to them, and they themselves shut uj:* in their fer- 
tile valleys, unable to exchange their wealth of cereals for the 
merchandise they could not create. But there at the outlet of 
their noble river stood the obstinate Spaniard, sword in hand, 
refusing them egress to the open sea and excluding them from 
the commerce of the world. They must despoil their luxuriant 
valleys to pour their tribute at his feet, and share with an alien 
and an enemy, '"the largest return which American labor had 
yet reaped under the industry of its own free hands." No ; they 
would not. The}^ had fought the savage and the wild beast. 
They had come here to accept their heritage from the hand of 
nature and to find justice without relying on the power of kings. 
They must go to the sea. If Congress opposed, it was to be 
defied, as the Crown of England had been in the Revolution. 
If the Spaniard opposed, they would drive him off" the conti- 
nent and rid the land of an incumbrance. They set their faces 
like flint for the empire of the West. Twenty thousand men, 
trained in the field and the forest, turned their backs to the 

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ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED tSlATES 91 

Alieghanies and their faces toward the great river, resolved to 
march to its mouth and drive the Spaniards into the sea. 

Congress could not deny their plea, and yet was not strong 
enough to espouse their cause. The need of a closer union in 
place of " the rope of sand "' which bound the states together 
became evident. The great Northwest must be saved. A new 
vision burst upon the American people. "A great and inde- 
pendent fund of revenue," said Madison, '" is passing into the 
hands of a single body of men Avho can raise troops to an in- 
definite number and appropriate money to their support for an 
indefinite period of time. . . . Yet no blame has been 
whisi)ered, no alarm has been sounded." Since, then, there 
already existed in the Union a form of sovereign power, Avhy 
not give it substance? Why not provide the nation with an 
adequate constitutional basis? Under these circumstances was 
convoked the Constitutional Convention of 1787. 

The lands between the Alieghanies and the Mississippi were 
seen to be the key to the continent. They were the old vantage 
ground of France. Emigration was setting toward them and 
in a few years they wovild constitute a mighty empire. They 
belonged to the people, not to the states, and the common pos- 
session bound the whole ])opulation together in a corporate in- 
terest. The discernment of this momentous fact created a new 
patriotism and Hooded the intelligence of the people with a new 
light. Henceforth there were to be two kinds of government to 
correspond to the two kinds of interest that existed — that of the 
States, preserving their memories, their traditions, and their or- 
ganizations, and giving perpetuity to their laws and liberties, 
and that of the Nation, binding them all together in indissoluble 
union, preserving the common heritage of their people, giving 
them fraternity at home and prestige abroad, sweeping away the 
local barriers to trade and intercourse, gathering the whole 
people under the folds of one glorious flag, and sheltering the 
sister states under the spacious dome of a common nationality 
whose protection should extend over all alike. 

No wonder that tlie Constitution lias been called " the finest 
specimen of constructive statesmanshi]> that the world has ever 
seen." It has a character of universality about it like the great 
laws of nature. It was compacted of historic liberties won in a 
thousand battles and rendered sacred by colonial memories and 
revolutionary struggles, yet was made for indefinite growth and 
future expansion, in view of vast stretches of unoccupied wilder- 

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02 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ness threaded by might}' rivers destined to bear upon their 
bosoms the commerce ot" untold millions when these trackless 
wilds should be peopled by the makers of the Great West. 'I'lie 
history of the United States is the story of its continued bene- 
dictions. Amjjler vision has broadened the interpretation of its 
meaning, and enlarged experience has widened the application 
of its principles; and today, as hitherto, the Constitution is 
flexible enough to admit of adaptation to all the changing con- . 
ditions of our national development, 3''et strong enough to hold 
in one harmonious system fortj'-five great states, spanning the 
continent and including within their limits every diversity of 
nature and ever}' variety of man. Designed for a population of 
three millions, it has become the fundamental law of more than 
seventy; ratified by a little fringe of people scattered along the 
Atlantic seaboard, it is accepted by a great continental nation ; % 

written in a period of legalized slavery, it has laid the founda- '■; 

tions of universal liberty ; expressing the final goal toward which 
})olitical evolution is tending — local government for local affairs 
and a general government for general affairs — it presents a model 
for the final organization of the entire human race, when some 
far-distant dawn shall usher in 

" The parHatnent of man, the federation of the world." 



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